Tag Archive: Super Committee

Some mistakes die hard.
House Republicans, eager to paint democrats as opposed to negotiations, are proposing a new Super Committee. The so-called Super Committee was the result of the last round of 11th hour negotiations over the debt limit, the ill-fated attempt to forge compromise out of concentrated congressional privilege.
The last Super Committee enjoyed the prospect of direct access to the House and Senate floor for their recommendations (had they produced any), to be created in an environment completely insulated from the press, constituents and electoral consequences. (Though lobbyists still had no problems penetrating it.)
While it's unclear how this Super Committee would be structured, it's unlikely to matter much since it appears to be another dead-end ploy from House Republicans trying to paint their long-organized defunding effort as some sort of play for greater compromise in Washington.
The Super Committee was a secretive, misbegotten failure the first time around, and we should consider ourselves lucky if this one never gets taken seriously.

With the supercommittee's deadline only five days away, the special deficit-cutting panel's chances of reaching a deal appear to be in doubt. And if no agreement is reached, more than one trillion dollars in cuts would be set in motion starting in 2013. That is, if the Congress and president allow the automatic trigger to take effect.

All of this is predicated on budget forecasting, a notoriously inaccurate art. As the CBO pointed out in a September report, an analysis based on projected baseline budgets and economic projections are “subject to a considerable degree of uncertainty.” Indeed, we ...

All but one Senate member on the super committee collected less campaign funds this quarter compared the previous quarter. Only Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, had a modest increase collecting a total of $85,532.